Horseless Carriage Tour 2024 By the President of the Palos Verdes Historical Society, Dana Graham

On the last Sunday of the year the Horseless Carriage Club of Southern California hosts a car show and driving tour of Pasadena, San Marino, Sierra Madre, and environs. To participate, you must drive a 1932 or older car to the event. The result is a mixture on pre-WW 1 steam cars and high end cars in an era when cars were still viewed as playthings for the wealthy – Pierce Arrows, Locomobiles, Pope-Hartfords, Ramblers (not the one you remember), Auburns, Bentleys, Thomas Flyers, Stanley Steamers, you name it. I think we had the only Packard there this year – drove it up from Palos Verdes at 6 am.

One thing this experience brings home to you, apart from the amazing fact that these cars still run (tho there were a couple of break-downs), is the sheer number of auto manufacturers that were around prior to the Great Depression. And you also have your garden variety celebrities that show up – Jay Leno and the like.

***About a 1928 Auburn Boattail Speedster***

***Cars everyone forgot #2 -- an Abbott Detriot***

***Fiat Multipla. Didn't qualify for the tour.***

The last few years the cars have met at Arcadia Regional Park, corner of Santa Anita Ave and Huntington Dr in Arcadia for about 2 hours of gawking at cars you just never see unless you pay to go to a museum. The main difference is that these cars actually run, despite the obstacles to driving them with modern gas, modern roads, marginal brakes, sub-glacial acceleration, and steering that can only be accomplished after weight training. At about 9:30 we take off on a roughly 2-hour tour (a 3-hour tour would have dire implications) thru the magnificent, old money neighborhoods of Pasadena and San Marino where the original owners of these palatial estates would have driven cars like this, and now with many of the current residents standing in their driveways to watch them all go by.